The present disclosure is directed to a turbine rotor, e.g., for driving a rotary atomizer turbine, a drive turbine with a turbine rotor, and further components of a rotary atomizer such as a bearing unit, an intermediate sleeve, a deflection ring and a stator ring.
In modern painting installations for painting motor vehicle body components, a rotary atomizer is usually used as an application device, which has a bell cup as an application element. The drive for conventional rotary atomizers may be pneumatic using a drive turbine which is blown through with compressed air, wherein the drive turbine is formed as a radial turbine. This means that the compressed air acting as a drive fluid flows on the turbine blades of the drive turbine in a plane which is radial to the rotational axis of the bell cup. Use of a radial turbine for driving a rotary atomizer offers the advantage that the required drive torque can be reached in such a way that a drive turbine wheel with an appropriately large diameter is used.
The disadvantage of using a radial turbine for driving a rotary atomizer is, however, that the limited driving power can hardly be made to exceed 650 W for adequately fine atomization in an rpm range of 8,000-80,000 rpm, whereby the paint outflow rate is limited to values of approximately 1,000 ml/min. This basic disadvantage of a radial turbine also cannot be removed by increasing the size of the radial turbine since this is not possible due to space and weight considerations. Also achieving an increase in the maximum possible driving power by increasing the pressure level or the air throughput of the drive air is practically not possible since this would lead to excessively high investment or operating costs.
Accordingly, there is a need for a rotary atomizer having an increased maximum possible driving power.